With the help of the community foundation, three high school seniors can now head off to college without worrying about the cost of tuition or books.
The Lilly Endowment Scholarship is awarded to local high school seniors each year by the Johnson County Community Foundation. This scholarship pays full tuition to any Indiana college and provides a $900 stipend each year for textbooks.
Applications open in August and students who apply are asked about leadership, volunteer work, school performance and their overall character. Winners are then chosen by the scholarship committee.
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The three winners this year are Kaylee TenBarge, a senior at Roncalli High School; Jonathan Ott, a senior at Franklin Community High School; and Hannah Heilman, a senior at Greenwood Community High School. This is the second year the foundation has awarded three students with scholarships instead of two.
Reaching for the stars
TenBarge can now choose the school of her dreams with a full scholarship.
She hopes attend either the University of Notre Dame or Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology to study aerospace engineering.
TenBarge found aerospace engineering after a former student of her physics teacher spoke to her class about his career in the field.
“The more he talked, it was like mesmerizing. The more he talked, the more I wanted to be a part of that,” TenBarge said.
TenBarge is the on the school dance team, and she has been a member since her freshman year. She is also in the American Sign Language club, Spanish club and DIY club.
With Notre Dame’s tuition costing more than $51,000 and Rose-Hulman’s at more than $46,000, TenBarge is glad she can pick her school of choice without worrying about paying for it in the future.
She hopes to attend Notre Dame as her first choice, and she is still waiting to see if she is accepted. She later wants to study at Purdue University or Rose-Hulman for a master’s degree.
“My number one would be Notre Dame, but if I hadn’t gotten the scholarship, that wasn’t going to happen,” she said. “If I get accepted, that means I can go to Notre Dame, which has been a dream forever.”
TenBarge received the news about the scholarship when she was alone, but she called her parents as soon as she found out.
“She called me right after and she was screaming, crying, yelling, laughing all at the same time,” her mom, Stephanie TenBarge said.
Her parents weren’t surprised she is one of the recipients of the scholarship.
“We were surprised, kind of, but also not surprised,” Stephanie TenBarge said. “She works really hard.”
Ready to help others
For Ott, the scholarship means the work he’s done to help others is paying off, and he can continue that work after high school.
Ott plans to attend Indiana University to obtain a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering and then earn a master’s degree in neuroengineering. He hopes to become a neuroengineer, where he would spend time researching brains by connecting them to computers and using robotics to help people with moving prosthetic body parts.
“Ever since sixth grade, I’ve have a little bit of an interest in brains. I don’t know where that came from,” Ott said. “I can do two things at once. I can help people out and work with brains. It was a perfect situation.”
Ott is a member of the the student council and National Honors Society in school. He is currently in his second term as president of the mayor’s youth council, a group of Franklin Community High School teens formed to engage with city government and take on special projects that interest them and improve the community. The group is responsible for building the inclusive playground at Heron Park in Franklin.
“That’s probably my favorite group I’ve been a part of out of all of them,” he said. “Of course, the playground, that was huge. That was a paradigm shifter just to see kids play on it.”
To him, this scholarship means that his hard work to help the community is paying off, he said. He was surprised but really happy when he was told he was receiving the scholarship.
“I got a phone call. I called back, and they said it was from the community foundation, so I just thought it was something with the mayor’s youth council,” Ott said. “They said, ‘You got it,’ and I’m like, ‘Wait, I got what?’ … It hit me out of nowhere.”
Hard work pays off
From a young age, Heilman knew she didn’t want anything to prevent her from following her passions when she got older, whatever they may be.
And so she worked hard, kept her grades up and stayed involved in her school and community, she said.
“Since I was little, I’ve known that I didn’t want something to hold me back when I got older,” Heilman said. “To me, it means everything. What I’ve worked for for the longest time is all paying off.”
Until recently, Heilman thought she wanted to be a journalist, but then she found a new passion in a career in Christian ministry.
“I went to a retreat in February and I felt called to become a pastor,” she said.
Heilman is deciding between attending Taylor University or Indiana Wesleyan University. Taylor University was originally not an option because of the higher tuition, but with the scholarship, she said she now has a difficult decision to make.
“Now that money’s not even in question, it’s hard to decide between the two,” Heilman said.
With her background in writing, she also plans to study creative writing in addition to Christian ministries.
In school, Heilman is the vice president of National Honor Society, and she is a member of many other clubs and organizations including band, the newspaper staff and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Outside of school, Heilman has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten, and she received the Gold Award last year, which is a self-led project equivalent to an Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts.
